


Marked

by AmnesiaticRoses



Category: Amnesia: The Dark Descent
Genre: All in his head, M/M, Possession, Psychological Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-25
Updated: 2015-06-25
Packaged: 2018-04-06 04:45:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4208412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmnesiaticRoses/pseuds/AmnesiaticRoses
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daniel thought he was outrunning the Shadow. Turns out, it had plans of its own. Now Daniel has an unwanted passenger in his mind as he approaches the Inner Sanctum - and it's not above venting on its host before they get to Alexander. </p><p>Written ages ago for the Amnesia Kink Meme.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Running. His whole world had wound down to this - running, gasping for air, and trying to ignore the burning in his lungs, the aching in his legs, the screaming in his mind.

And the Shadow. No, he couldn't ignore that. It was coming. Not even like before, when it was nebulous, distant - hearing word of a death on the other side of town, or the deep feeling of unease that permeated him when he stayed in one place too long. No, now it was here, sucking the air from the hall, reaching, creeping, grabbing-

All he could do was run.

Ringing filled Daniel's ears and he forced his arms to pump faster. His screaming legs shifted gears to match pace. Faster. Had to go faster!

He skidded around a corner so quickly he swung wide and nearly crashed into the far wall. There! Ahead, a door loomed - and beyond was safety. Agrippa was there, he'd know what to do next. Agrippa had a plan. And something about the man, or what was left of him, seemed to fill the area around him with serenity.

Daniel tried to put on another burst of speed, but his limbs had no more to give. He dodged around one barrel and slowed to avoid another. Behind him, the Shadow howled as his flagging speed brought him closer to its grasp. But it wasn't enough, not this time. Just another twenty feet... fifteen...

The indistinct light from his lantern suddenly illuminated something, a box or piece of timber, lying across most of the hall. No time to go around. He tried to leap over.

It was only a foot tall. Hopping over the box could have been child's play, literally. But after all he'd been through so far in this horrifying day, his limbs dragged, weak from fatigue and terror. His lead foot cleared it, just barely, but his back foot caught on the lip of the box. 

Everything upended, the walls swirled by madly, and he landed sprawled out on his stomach, the air from his lungs expelling painfully. The hall plunged into semi-darkness as the lantern flew from his hand and clattered down the hallway, throwing shadows and coming to a rest just short of the exit.

"No." Daniel whispered. Each repeat rose a little in pitch, in urgency as the fear he'd barely been holding at bay threatened to overwhelm everything. "No. no, no, no." he scrambled forward on all fours, legs still tangling with the box at first. He couldn't get any traction. "No, no, no, no, no." Finally he kicked the box away. Instead of clattering, it bounced once against the stone floor before just..silencing. "No, no, no, no, oh please-"

Something wrapped around his ankle, solid and unyielding, pulling him up short. His hand smacked to the stone a couple feet short of the lantern and door.

But that sensation - cold, formless and unyielding - began to creep up his leg. Closing his eyes tightly and fighting down utter panic, he kicked out with his free leg.

It was like kicking mud. His foot went in easily, barely seeming to encounter resistance, but when he tried to pull back again, there was no give left. He braced his hands on the floor, trying to pull himself forward by his arms alone, but it was like he dragged the world behind him. 

Fear abruptly fled, leaving in its wake a numb resignation. Daniel bowed his head, pressing his forehead to the stone floor. So close. He'd done everything they'd asked. He'd even made himself a monster, then sought futile redemption, and now, to be failed by a box and his own treacherous body. 

"No!" he shouted as the cloying pressure surged up over him. The lantern went out.

Everything went black.

 

Unnatural stillness settled over the hallway. Seconds stretched to minutes. The remaining embers of the lantern sputtered and died, leaving everything in utter darkness.

Then came a dragging sound. Short and light at first, then more insistent. Cloth rustled. Footsteps trailed from the spot where Daniel had fallen to the front of the door, followed by a clatter as something picked up the lantern. Sparks flared and the light flamed to life.

On the outside, Daniel's hand raised the light to shoulder level, testing its weight, then he smiled. The flickering flame caught red and black flecks in his eyes.

On the inside, Daniel finally screamed.


	2. Chapter 2

Fear had been a constant state for so long. Monsters, voices, memories and the ever-present darkness had run together into an unending pall of panic. But right now, he'd take it all. The monsters, the horrible chase through the water, the looming memories, even the blackness when he was forced to hide and the entire world seemed to disappear into shadows.

This was worse.

He forced himself to stop screaming. As soon as the sound stopped, it was swallowed up, as though the air itself absorbed it. Daniel felt weakened, bound, as though something were dragging at every bit of him, trying to pull him to the ground. He also felt... displaced. Like he had two sets of eyes. One, the fainter one, was opening a door whose handle he couldn't feel under his fingers. 

The other was stuck in an endless darkness. Nothing moved. He tried to focus on the door, on the hall the other him had entered, but it was like trying to grasp a half-remembered thought. The moment he focused on it, it slipped away entirely. It left only the inky blackness, so complete and utter that he could not believe anything could exist out there, a darkness so solid it was oozing, it had to be what he felt dragging at him, it was crawling, alive, it was eating away at reality itself, sapping his strength, leaving him alone, all alone, and maybe it wouldn't even kill him, it would just leave him, undying, alone, lost, fading...

"I really have a coward here, don't I?"

Blessed light glowed beyond his eyelids. When had he closed his eyes? And who was talking?

Slowly he uncurled from the defensive position he'd drawn himself into and sat up. The darkness still surrounded him, impenetrable and endless, but now there was a single, short candle sitting in front of him. Its tiny flame cast what Daniel could see of himself in stark relief and threw a little island of light around him.

He stared at it hungrily, trembling hands on the ground on either side, so close he could feel its heat.

Only after several seconds did he realize he had no idea where the voice had come from.

"Wh... who's there?" he asked, trying to force the quavering from his voice. It didn't work.

Something chuckled. He couldn't say someone - no human had a voice like that. It boomed everywhere, like when Alexander spoke directly into his mind but a dozen times louder and more imposing.

"Don't you know me? After all this time?"

The chuckling came again, from everywhere and nowhere, and Daniel tried to shrink into the center of his little island of light. "Look at you," the voice boomed. "Finally out of places to run."

Daniel started trembling. He crossed his arms over his chest, trying to force the tremors away, but they wouldn't go. the voice. He knew that voice. He'd never heard it speak, but he heard it roaring, echoing behind him so many times today.

"How can you be talking?" he asked. "I'm... I'm dead. I've been killed. That's it, and this is all in my head-"

"One right and one wrong," the voice growled inches from Daniel's ear. He jumped away and spun, but only more darkness greeted his eyes. The voice continued, coming closer word by word to Daniel's new location. "Dead? No. But this *is* all in your head." The speaker - the Shadow - circled around behind him, talking conversationally. "Did you think I was coming after you to kill you?"

It wasn't until it added an impatient "Well?" that Daniel realized it wanted an answer. 

"I... that is, Alexander said that-"

The Shadow roared. Everything shook, and the candle guttered and went out. In the disorientation that followed Daniel fell to what he hoped was the floor, hands protectively over his head as the creature vented its anger.

"Do not speak of that thing to me!" it said, the words shaking Daniel's very bones. "I know of its lies and its destruction! Why do you think you're here? Why do you think you were allowed to leave with the orb? Why did you think you survived when all those you spoke with perished? How do you think you were able to rejoin the orb? Did you think it was luck? Intelligence? Your own human fortitude?" 

With one last roar, the Shadow brought back the single candle. Daniel slowly unwound again, trying his very best not to look like a groveling coward. He even tried to stand, but the heaviness in his limbs made it an unsteady proposition.

"I let you go," the Shadow said, calmer now. "I marked you and I let you go. Because that thing you call Alexander has been looking for the orbs for a long time and its touch is destruction. I needed to find it again and stop it from causing further harm. And the best way was to give it some bait and wait for it to come out."

"Bait," Daniel repeated, mouth going dry.

Another laugh like a rockslide shook the area. "Does it hurt your pride, boy? Well, take pride in this, if you want. That foul creature has put up barriers. My form cannot pass through them, but yours can, and I mean to. This is the first time in many millennia that I've needed to take on a mortal form. You're one of the few creatures ever who can be said to have performed a vital service to me." 

That wasn't comforting, but Daniel figured this wasn't the time to say so. "So what are you going to do with me? After you... face Alexander, I mean."

"Would it help if I told you that at one point I was considering letting you go free once you'd performed your service to me?" Even the past tense couldn't stop a tiny flicker of hope from igniting within the depths of his dread. It was possible for him to survive then Shadow? Alexander was wrong? Maybe he-

"Not anymore." Never had a whisper sounded so loud, so close. Daniel found himself frozen in place, unable to tell if his immobility was the shadow's doing or his own fear as the words were breathed into his ear. The sensation of a touch trailed across his shoulders. "You've become Alexander's apprentice. You learned eagerly, didn't you?"

"No, I-"

"I can see your mind," The Shadow yelled, once more setting everything to trembling. Daniel winced, the only motion his body seemed to allow. "You were willing to believe anything, even if your reason told you it was lies. You would do anything to protect your own life, even to murder. The other one, he's abused the orbs, abused their power over and over, and he will get his reward. But you." The venom in that word was palpable. "Your sin was worse. You thought to use the power of the orbs to banish me - their guardian! And you did it on the bodies of those who had done nothing. There is no defense for someone like you."

Daniel wanted to deny it, but how could he? His throat felt so dry he wasn't even sure he could mount a defense even if there was anything this creature was likely to listen to. Whatever sense Alexander's explanations had once made seemed so distant, slipping from his mind in the face of the immense nothingness he faced now - not only the shadow, but the yawning chasm into which his own acts had hurtled his soul. And hadn't he become a murderer - a monster? - with far less urging from Alexander than it should have taken? That girl...

"Yes, let's start with that girl," the Shadow's voice purred."There's time, isn't there, before we get there. A few things left to do yet. Agrippa's plan is a good one. Shouldn't waste it. And I should teach the student before I teach the master, hmm?"

The candle snuffed out with a terrible finality.

Instantly, Daniel realized the darkness was alive, crawling, closing in on him. He tried to convince himself not to panic, but then something wrapped around one leg, rooting him in place, and another slid up across his midsection. Faintly he could see the other him was speaking with Agrippa, but it slipped away again almost immediately, more hallucination than sight. 

And then, eyes wide or shut, Daniel could see nothing. Only touch and sound remained to him - the touch of something cold wrapping around his wrists, lifting his leaden arms and the sound of the Shadow's voice, murmuring thoughtfully, "Who knows. This vessel of yours might even survive what's to come." A faint whisper of a touch caressed his neck. "If it does, we could have... years together."


	3. Chapter 3

The shadow held true to its promise of starting with the little girl. Even now, thanks to the potion he'd drunk, he remembered her last moments only in the vaguest of ways - the way she screamed when he caught her, the incredible fragility of her wrist in his hand.

The knife.

In the absolute darkness, the chill of cold metal traced down one of his arms, which was pulled up and out. It followed the contour of his skin, moving lightly and sliding, finally, under his sleeve. For a moment the fabric resisted, then parted with a hoarse sound. 

"Just a little girl," The Shadow mused as the knife continued its inexorable trip downward, cutting his shirt open at the side. "So small. How did it feel, raising that knife over her?" A bright line of pain across his throat accompanied the question. The knife, Daniel realized.

Resisting the urge to swallow, Daniel said, "I'm sorry. It was monstrous. She was so small... so small."

The blade slid away from his neck and cut along the top of his shirt, cutting it loose and baring the left side of his chest. "How well do you remember her?"

"I-"

"Not well enough," the Shadow said maliciously. 

Everything went white, and for a moment he was back there. Her terrified face filled his vision, and closing his eyes could not banish her and did nothing to stop the inexorable march of events. She struggled, first threatening, then pleading. Her eyes stared at him as he tried to will his arm to stop raising, his fingers to loosen and drop the knife, but nothing changed. The arm tensed, driving the blade toward the pitifully small body in a deadly arc.

Daniel screamed as pain shot through his upper body. The Shadow left the knife where it had planted it, high on the left side of Daniel's chest, and began circling him. "Unfortunately, unlike you, her real body was stabbed," it said. "How many times did you drive that knife through her? Four? Five? Should I?" Daniel tried to answer, but in the darkness, the only thing he could concentrate on, the only thing he could even sense, was the pain. It stole his breath, and the only answer he could give was a soft moan. "Isn't it nice? You can't die in here. Immortality, of a sort." It paused, then said more slowly, "The time to turn my attention to your Alexander will soon he here. But there's still a little time. One of your other victims? Or maybe something a little less recent?"

The Shadow's presence, for lack of a better term, withdrew, leaving Daniel hanging in the middle of his worst nightmare in what felt like a web of cool, slick ropes. He tried to breathe in short gasps to keep his chest from rising and falling too much and disturbing the wound there, but even that slight motion was enough. He hung weakly in his bonds, torn between wishing the Shadow would just end it and feeling that he had earned this punishment a hundred times over.

Dully, he noticed something at the edge of his consciousness. It was like a vague flickering of emotions, some so long unused that he felt like he'd forgotten them. Happiness. Love. The more familiar deep fear. Loss. Trepidation.

"Such an interesting childhood," the Shadow's voice mused from far away. 

Daniel tensed, roused from his stupor by those four words, breath catching in his throat. Was it digging through his memories? Was that the sensation he'd felt? He knew begging was useless, but he would try it, try anything, this nightmare was terrible enough without-

"What have you been doing?" That voice. Familiar. Even edged with the Shadow's muted roar, he knew it. It echoed in the remnants of his nightmares when he woke.

Footsteps, heavy and loud, approached from the right. A hand clamped onto the chin and forced his head to the side. Daniel's eyes scoured the new direction frantically, but all he saw was the blank black layering over itself, darker and darker even though every shade seemed like it should be already impossibly black.

"Look at you," The Shadow said in his father's scorn-laced voice. The hand shoved his face away and released him. At the same moment, whatever it was that had been supporting him did too, and he dropped to the ground. Landing shakily on all fours, a brief, violent war broke out inside his mind

**I have to get out of here, have to escape have to run have to find a light-**

_-don't make him angrier, everything will get worse if he-_

**-I can't be stuck in here, it's going to keep me here, trap me-**

_-would be worse if he just left, left you all alone with just the darkness and the nothing-_

A pressure between his shoulders firmly pressed him toward the ground, deciding the matter for him. "What a son I have," his father murmured. "A coward and a murderer." Daniel was flat against the ground now, pinned both by the weight on his back and a terrible, engulfing fear, the deep, pure terror of a child who knows that no one is coming to save him from the monsters in the night. "What is to be done with you? You never learn."

The pressure withdrew, then unseen from the darkness, something struck him in the side, rolling him over with a pained groan. Giddily, absurdly, his mind latched onto this. As painful, as wrong, as terrible it was, it was at least familiar. Before the second blow struck, he curled into as protective a shape as he could.

Twice more the foot descended, battering his already bruised body. But as he tensed for another blow...

Nothing.

He stayed curled up, listening to the new, total silence around him. His breath began to come faster, in rasping gasps. His hands came down from over his head and braced on the floor as he half turned, trying to look around. No sound, no motion, no glimmer of light.

"Where?" he asked, the word coming out little more than a harsh whisper. He could feel his heartbeat beginning to truly race, the sound of it thundering in his ears. He hesitated, torn between running, trying to find somewhere lit and safe, or just curling up here and hoping for death.


	4. Chapter 4

Something drove into him out of the dark, striking his right shoulder and dropping him flat on his back with a painful thud. His frayed nerves, pushed to the edge already, managed to climb to a new level. He felt sure he could hear something out there, something walking closer with heavy steps, dragging metal behind it. He struggled with the strength of desperation, to try to push whatever had him pinned off, even trying to aim a fist for where the head should be if someone were crouched over him with their hands where he felt them, pressing on his right shoulder and the center of his chest.

His hand hit nothing. Either his attacker had moved or, somehow, it simply had no head. Daniel bit back a moan of terror and tried with his whole body to twist out of its grip, striking out wildly now, not aiming, not even sure what he hoped to accomplish other than that he HAD to get free. Couldn't it hear them coming? They were almost here, unseen creatures with their chains and their tools, they were going to lock him down, leave him here-

Something struck him resoundingly on the side of the head, and for a moment the darkness was driven back by a spiral of insubstantial white lights and a fresh burst of pain. "Hold STILL boy." It was... his father's voice again? But not exactly. "I won't tell you again." Hands wrestled his own arms to a position against the floor just above his head. They were pinned at the wrists by one of his father's hands, aided by that horrible heaviness that permeated all things here. "You will listen boy. This is for your own good. What can I do to stop you? Clearly reason doesn't work. It demeans me, to resort to violence with my own blood, but you still seem willing to listen to no other teacher."

"Father?" Daniel wasn't even sure what he hoped to accomplish by his protestation. But his father wasn't listening, he never listened when there was an opportunity, he just charged ahead.

"Imagine what it would do to your mother, if news of your... indiscretions with that Baron you were so smitten with began to circulate among her circles. "

It took a moment for Daniel's addled mind to grasp the insinuation, but at least the realization of what was being said cleared his mind slightly. "I never!" he shot back. "I-"

"You never, or you don't remember?" The voice was changing again, deeper, smoother, more commanding now than his father's. A low chuckle surrounded him, and at blessed long last, a light flared once more.

Alexander leaned over him, smiling that disturbing half-smile he always wore when he already had things arranged and was just waiting for Daniel to realize that he had no choice but to go along. Go along with torture. Go along with murder. Go along with-

"My home wasn't the most comfortable of places for you, I know," Alexander was saying. "So many noises in the night. No made deep corners where the shadows never truly leave. So many nightmares." He released Daniel's wrists, but whether something else still held them or shock and fear were again seizing his muscles, they remained pinned above his head. The older man's hand traced down Daniel's arm. 

Those nights, waking from his sleep into the suffocating darkness of real life, felt like they'd happened a million years ago. He remembered fumbling at his bedside, trying to get a candle lit before the things he knew were lurking out there, just beyond sight, could get him. He remembered trying and failing to convince himself that the sounds coming distantly from other parts of the building were the wind, or animals, or just the settling of old stone and timber. He remembered the knock at his door.

The light dimmed. Daniel's eyes refocused on Alexander and found the man's face close, so close he could feel little puffs of breath on his skin. For a long moment, he thought Alexander was going to kiss him. The thought kept his breathing quick, his pulse racing, but some small part of the back of his mind asked, why? Because you're afraid he might? Or because you want him to again? 

That smile showed again, enigmatic and knowing, then the Baron bent his head and Daniel felt the press of lips, then teeth, against his neck. It wasn't gentle - he had a hard time imagining anything about Alexander could call forth such a word - but its insistence and the restrained power in the older man's body brought Daniel's nerves alive in a different way, demanding a response from his body.

Daniel bit his lip, straining to remember against the tide of sensation that threatened to steal his focus. The Shadow, this was only the Shadow. But was it a lie? Had he and Alexander actually been...? He knew the thought had occurred to him, but the Baron always seemed so aloof, so focused. He couldn't imagine broaching the subject, and his mind rebelled even harder at the idea of Alexander initiating anything, despite current sensory evidence. But the Shadow seemed now to have more access to his own memories than he himself did and... and...

His thoughts drew forcibly back to his body as Alexander's questing attention traced down the bare left side of his chest, tracing patterns over the sensitive parts. He shivered involuntarily, and not from the chill of the void they were in. Too late, Daniel remembered the knife wound from earlier, wincing in anticipation, but the Baron passed over the location without causing a hint of pain.

If Daniel had any illusions about how completely the Shadow knew his thoughts at the moment, they extinguished like a candle in a gust as the Shadow-tainted voice of Alexander said, "Ah. I'd forgotten about that. Would you like it back?"

"No!" Daniel replied, hoping against hope that the words actually had some impact but doubting it would be so. Whatever happened, he felt for the moment clear-headed. Alexander, or at least the Alexander that the Shadow had built here in his mind, had drawn back. He still straddled Daniel, who could feel the warm weight pinning him. Something about the moment bothered him, even though all the other conflicting thoughts warring for attention, but he couldn't pin down the thought.

When it spoke again, the shadow used its own voice, unaltered by those from his memories. "Well, if that's really not what you want right now, I would be a poor guest not to listen. But maybe you want something else?"

Alexander's form seemed to melt. "How long has it been that you've thought about me?" it asked. The face stretched, elongating hideously into a caricature of one of the servants before the colors got lost entirely in a wash of red and black. "Maybe that's what you want. You were fascinated with me long before we met."

"No," Daniel repeated, but this time it carried less conviction. Because despite the insinuation, it was right. Now before him was the exact thing Daniel had always feared he'd see when the lantern or candle got lit in a dark room. A living shadow, solid and twisting and reaching. He could feel tendrils of it wrapping around his legs, and everywhere they went, a chill like the touch of wet ice followed.

"You've been expecting me," the Shadow insisted. It retained a vaguely humanoid shape, and somehow that made things worse, more monstrous. "As a child, you waited for me in the night. As an adult, you heard my call. I have directed you since you first touched the orb, but before that, I could not reach you." It made a small, amused sound as Daniel struggled against the tightening pressure binding his legs. . "You came to me. You sought me out. You've been waiting for this day. You wanted me to mark you... to take you."

" You knew you belonged to me."


	5. Chapter 5

The slow movement of the shadow's touch grew more intimate. Daniel didn't even have it left in him to fight. There was no protestation he could voice that this thing had not already heard in his mind, no ¬movement of revulsion it could not see coming before even his own muscles first twitched. Maybe if he wasn't interesting, the thing would just let him die once it had done whatever it had come to do, out there or in here.

"Ah, yes. Speaking of which..."

The shadow didn't leave him, but it did at least stop moving, draping over Daniel's form like a wet shroud. Again came that odd sense of doubling, of two places at once, and Daniel saw his hand reaching out (the inner sanctum, already?) and felt a flash of red around him as the altar took its price. The scene wheeled, rocked, then righted itself and moved into a archaic, mystic circle on the ground. The last key, the last barrier. He could hear Alexander's voice, querying, warning, but not yet aware of what exactly was walking into the orb chamber. Abruptly - stupidly - Daniel felt a weak flutter of a desperate, subtle anger. He hated Alexander, true. He would have ended the Baron with his own hand. But this - to be the mask used by another in the deed - felt like a final humiliation.

"Now watch," the voice whispered in his ear, intimate as a lover's pillow talk. "This is the true retribution, the wages earned by pursuing that which is not yours." 

Daniel tried to close his eyes, but in this hell the Shadow had made for him, it was all the same and the scene continued apace - Alexander's body, floating and surrounded by a crackle of energy, drawing closer with each step of what used to be Daniel's body.

A sardonic laugh filled the space around them and the clingy sensation of the shadow withdrew some. "It really is amazing, how important humans see themselves. Such a narrow world." The sensation withdrew entirely, leaving Daniel unfettered for what felt like the first time in forever. He couldn't even bring himself to try and sit up. "Very well. Your need for vengeance is based in absurdity and self-delusion, but I suppose it is no less real for that. Go on. Have our retribution."

Being in control of his own body again after what felt like forever made Daniel stagger. He felt ultra aware of everything - the chill of the air, the reverberations of Alexander's voice as it echoed both outside and inside his head, even the twin weights of his old friend the lantern and... what...?

He glanced down, then nearly screamed and simultaneously nearly dropped the item. A head, Agrippa's severed head. This had been the plan, but somehow seeing it, still twitching and gumming without its body, shot another surge of unreality through the situation. 

"Ah yes, that one. We reached an accord of a sort, he and I," the Shadow said, voice booming so loudly in Daniel's head that he winced. " He's been waiting so long. This should be satisfying for him as well. Send him through the portal if you wish. That creature will have no need for it."

Alexander's voice paused, momentarily, then said, sharper, "Daniel! What have you... no. You brought it here? You brought it within my wards?"

It was strange - after being locked in his own head, Daniel now saw Alexander as deflated, almost pitiful - an old, naked man hanging in the air on display in hopes of a brief chance at a happy ending he'd paid for with others' blood. Daniel couldn't even be frightened of him. The darkness had taken all the fear he had.

The portal tore open with a rough, mechanical sound. With a careless motion, Daniel hefted Agrippa's head and slung it into the portal before Alexander could make a move. The howl of anguish hit him like a physical wave, but he only closed his eyes briefly against the onslaught. Then there was a rushing, a sense of wingbeats against the back of his eyelids, and the Shadow was gone. A moment later, and Alexander's real screams began. The room quaked around him, forcing Daniel to steady himself on one of the pillars lest he fall over. But then it shifted away from his hand, and the roof, the walls, everything seemed to be falling and breaking and Daniel found her still had a little self-preservation left. 

He ran, hands over his head as though he were trying to protect from a passing rain shower instead of bits of timber and castle wall the size of his whole body. Across the bridges over the abyss, through the formerly flooded areas, up into the castle proper.

When he reached it, he found the Shadow had removed its presence from the door. Daniel grabbed the handle and pulled, arms trembling and weak. The first pull yielded nothing. The thought of what lay behind him laced iron through his muscles and the door creaked open just enough for him to slip outside. 

Night still lay over the forest around the castle, but he could see the bruisy discoloration of dawn scraping away the darkness to the east. The breeze carried the chill of the evening still, and Daniel shivered, clothing soaked from his flight through the partially submerged areas and, very likely, his own sweat. How far was it to Altstadt? He couldn't grasp a memory of the trip. It had happened to someone else a lifetime and more ago. 

"Daniel."

He shivered again, this time not from the cold. The voice echoed in his mind like one of his own thoughts. He should have known getting away wouldn't be even that easy. 

"Daniel," the Shadow repeated, voice seductively low. "Run now. Run. Thank you for your help. We'll have time together again... later."

And then it was gone, maybe it was gone, it would never be gone, and Daniel dropped to his knees i the empty morning and wept, and wept...


End file.
